i877-J Notices of Books* 541 
away from what now forms the coast-line of our country. This 
sea of ice was of such extent that the glaciers of Scandinavia 
coalesced with those of Scotland and the north-eastern districts of 
England, upon what is now the floor of the shallow North Sea , 
while a mighty stream of ice, flowing outwards from the western 
sea-board, obliterated the Hebrides, and sent its icebergs adrift 
in the deep waters of the Atlantic.” 
In Mr. Williams’s opinion the configuration of the Lofodens 
decidedly contradicts the passage put in italics. The glaciers 
swept over the inner portion of this group, as is proved by the 
rounded, “ hog’s-back ” form of the small rocky islets between 
Saltenfjord and Rost, but thinned out to seaward and failed to 
reach the rocks of Rost, which show no marks of the grinding- 
down aCtion of ice-masses. Hence the author infers that the 
glaciers were insufficient to push fifty miles out to sea, “ unless 
we suppose the submergence of the land to have been so great 
that the out-thrust mer de glace floated over these low rocks 
without grazing them.” He concludes that “ even at the bitterest 
period of greatest Eiiropean glaciation the waters of the ocean 
within the Arctic circle were warm enough to thaw , with consi- 
derable rapidity , the ice which had accumulated on the mountains 
and in the valleys of the land." 
The aspeCt of the North Cape and of the other headland along 
the northern face of Europe seems also, to the author, to refute 
the idea of a great ice-sheet having “ proceeded radially from the 
north polar regions, and overswept Scandinavia and the rest of 
Northern Europe.” He finds that the “ craggy headlands and 
the structure all indicate that the ice-sheet moved in the contrary 
direction, from south to north.” It may, he admits, be urged in 
opposition that weathering has produced the precipitous character 
of the headlands since the Glacial epoch. This, however, he 
argues is contradicted by the “ absence of a sea-beach such as 
would be formed by the material washed down by the waves had 
they done the great amount of work necessary for the conversion 
of glaciated slopes into precipices rising above 1000 feet out of 
the water.” The till he considers to have been deposited from 
the under surface of glaciers not resting upon the ground, but 
floating in shallow water. The difficulty of the ground moraine 
theory, he thinks, is that of reconciling the existence of such a 
deposit as the till “ with the tremendous erosive power of the 
glacier moving over it ; especially when we consider that at the 
time of its deposit from the thawing ice, the matrix, the present 
stiff clay must have been a piiree of thin slimy mud.” 
In the ice-age he holds that the seas adjacent must have been 
much deeper than at present. Not only would the earth’s centre 
of gravity be, he contends, affecfled by the piled-up masses of ice 
and snow, but these very masses must, by their own gravitation, 
raise the nearest sea-level. He quotes Prof. Ramsay to the 
effedf that the “probable submergence during, some part of the 
